Tuesday 12 May 2009

12th May 2009 - Dinner - Pitla

On today's Dinner menu was Pitla (the ending is a schwa not a long a sound), a quintessentially Maharashtrian dish, though it is also made in Gujarat, albeit slightly differently.

What?
Most North Indians might not be aware of Pitla, a staple dish for Maharashtrians. Made  using Besan, which is nothing but ground Chana Daal, it is pretty filling. And is pretty hassle-free to make; all the spices can be added to the besan mixture itself, so it minimises the number of utensils you need to clean afterwards (that is the primary factor for me while choosing one out of two recipes!)

How did it look?


The Tadka
Improvement
  • Nothing much, except I added a final tadka on the top, just for the effect. Took a small frying pan, heated some oil, put in rai (black mustard seed), jeera and then poured it on top of the dish (pic above).
  • This can also be made in a dry form, which has a longer shelf life, and can be carried on a trip.
  • When we make this, a bit of the besan sticks to the frying pan too, but unlike normal stuff which burns on getting stuck and makes your life more difficult when you want to clean the pan, this one does not. If you continuously stir the mixture, what you get on the sides is a nice vertical version of besan ka cheela, a dish not restricted to Maharashtra. Vaibhav liked it a lot, and we had fun scraping and eating that stuff.

2 comments:

  1. well.. you may not agree.. but still quite a typical maharashtrian dish..
    probably it is cooked first time in Germany :D

    i was infact wondering why don't they make it in our mess.. it's reallly yummy..

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  2. That's what I said, right?

    On today's Dinner menu was Pitla (the ending is a schwa not a long a sound), a quintessentially Maharashtrian dish

    ReplyDelete